Haunted Life
Part 3
by: Tigress Pern
Archive: GW Addiction (thanks Tyr!)
Warnings: Alternate Universe
Disclaimer: I don't own GW.
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Part Three

Trowa spent then next few days trying to get the
ghost to speak again. But as it had said earlier, it
didn't have much energy. Meanwhile, Quatre dug up as
much information about the house as possible. The
death had occurred nearly fifty years ago, when the
town was still very small. No one really knew the
family because they were very reclusive. They had
sold the house and left town only a few weeks after
the death. It had stood vacant for two years before
someone bought it. Every owner had reported something
strange occurring and had sold the place soon after.
Not a single owner had made it past October 31st in
the house. When Trowa heard this, he decided he and
Catherine would be the first.
Shortly after four on Friday, Catherine arrived home.
With her were a woman and a boy about his age. He
assumed the woman to be Ms. Sally Po, the woman who
was in charge of helping the kids in Juvenile Hall.
He was in the kitchen staring at the nearly empty
cupboard wondering what to have for dinner when they
appeared. Wanting Trowa to be part of the interview
process, she urged him to abandon his search. The
four retired to the living room, which had the fewest
boxes, to proceed.
Sally Po was a nice enough woman, Trowa decided. She
had a pleasant manner and was prone to smiling at him.
Her light brown hair appeared blond in the rays of
the setting sun that streamed in from the window
directly behind her. It gave an almost halo affect to
her, making her appear as if a saint sitting next to a
silent brooding demon. The boy, for the most part,
remained quiet as Sally pushed his good points. A
judge had decided to make an example out of him and
given him a stiffer sentence than the first time
offender deserved. It had been so minor that Sally
had originally believed that he would have only gotten
off with community service. Unfortunately, she'd been
wrong. Since then, she'd been trying to help him.
"He's an excellent mechanic and can fix almost
anything." Sally said. "I've seen him strip a car in
ten minutes. He's wonderful with computers and
electrical wiring. Plumbing shouldn't be that
difficult either."
"I would like to see a demonstration of his
capabilities." Catherine said calmly looking as stern
as possible.
"Of course."
Trowa remained polite and silent as the women talked
back and forth. The boy sat across from Trowa still
as a statue. His blue eyes watched the women intently
for a while, then shifted to him. Trowa wasn't
uncomfortable having the boy stare at him. He was
used to similar looks from his peers. They would
whisper in the halls about his loss. There had been
all sorts of rumors passed around about him, but he
held up stoically, never letting them see behind his
façade. Only Quatre and Wufei had seen the real him.
But that was so long ago, Trowa wondered if the mask
had become the real him.
"I don't see any problem about letting him tour the
house." Catherine was saying. "Under our
supervision."
"Of course." Sally agreed. "Come on let's go." She
stood as did Catherine and Trowa. The boy remained
seated. "Come on Heero, let's go look about the house
you'll be working at." Heero's eyes widened in
surprise for a moment then leapt back to their stony
glare.
"Hai, Po-san." He rose and followed Catherine and
Sally out of the room. Trowa watched them go.
"I wonder about him." Trowa admitted to himself.
Suddenly he felt a cold breeze sweep past him. "I
know you wonder about him too." The breeze swirled
around him once and was gone.

* * *

"Trowa!" Quatre called waving madly. The blonde was
exceedingly cheerful this morning. Wufei looked like
he'd just woken up. His hair was pulled back in a
loose ponytail, with ebony tendrils escaping here and
there. Trowa hurried up to the gate and opened it.
He'd been raking leaves outside while Sally and
Catherine were going over rules with Heero.
"How are you?"
"Not bad. Kari lent me a ouija board, tarot cards,
even a crystal ball." Quatre held up a black duffel
bag that was full of objects they planned to use in
the séance. "Not to mention a camera with very
sensitive film."
"What sort of film?" Wufei asked yawning.
"I don't know." He confessed. "All she said was that
it was very sensitive. God knows what she meant by
that." They walked up to the house. Trowa leaned his
rake against the wall by the door and the three
proceed in.
"I can't believe I'm here." Wufei whispered.
"Neither can I." Quatre murmured.
"If you two are done gawking, we could have lunch."
Trowa said a hint of humor in his voice.
"Lunch?" Wufei exclaimed. "I just had breakfast
twenty minutes ago."
"When did you get up?" asked Quatre.
"11:12AM." He replied.
"Lucky, Kari got me up at the crack of dawn to run
over a list of do and do nots with ghosts."
They crowded around the kitchen table while Trowa
pulled out last night's celebratory pizza. It was in
honor of Heero coming to live with them. Catherine
had wanted to be as welcoming as possible.
"I hope you don't mind cold pizza." He said as he
opened the half-empty box.
"It's the breakfast of champions." Quatre answered
smiling. Wufei rolled his eyes as he accepted a plate
from Trowa. As they ate, Trowa told them of the new
handyman.
"Yuy? I've heard that name before." Quatre muttered.
"You've heard everyone's name." Wufei growled as they
cleaned up. "His parent's probably have an account or
two at your dad's bank."
"Maybe…" Quatre began, but he was distracted from any
further thought on the subject by the sound of voices.
"Let's get upstairs." Trowa said urging his friends
out of the room and up the staircase. He could hear
Catherine continuing her lecture and the last thing
any of them needed was to be caught in it.
They had agreed that holding the séance in the boy's
actual room would give them the best contact results,
or so they hoped. Trowa new that just about anywhere
in the house would have been fine, but he didn't want
Catherine to find out. She didn't believe in the
supernatural, no matter how many times the ghost moved
objects about or turned on the radio. Therefore, in
the interest of avoiding a lecture on the silliness of
believing in ghosts, Trowa decided not to hold the
séance where she could easily find them.
Upon entering the room, Trowa fumbled for the light
switch. Once found, he flipped it on and waited to
hear the groans from his friends. The room was still
a mess of discarded furniture and boxes from previous
owners.
"This is the room?" Quatre asked staring hard at
Trowa in disbelief.
"And I supposed we get to clean it before we hold the
séance?" Wufei said. Trowa nodded. "Oh brother."
They began moving furniture out into the hallway,
then hiked over to one of the empty rooms and stashed
it in there. Trowa made them leave the bed, a set of
dresser drawers and a nightstand. They were items
that the ghost seemed particular to the few times that
week he'd been up in the room. It took them an hour
to clear the room and another to clean it. Quatre had
a sneezing fit because of the dust and was forced to
leave the room for a bit. While he was out, Wufei and
Trowa sent him to find a vacuum cleaner. Willing to
do anything to get rid of the mountain of dust
collected in the room, he hurried down the three
flights of stairs. At the bottom he nearly ran into
Catherine and Heero.
"Hello Catherine." Quatre smiled.
"Hello Quatre. I assume Wufei is here too." Quatre
nodded.
"Yes, we're helping Trowa clean out on of the
bedrooms on the third floor. It's very dusty, were is
your vacuum cleaner?"
"In the hall closet." Catherine said pointing to her
right. Quatre nodded and waving goodbye hurried over
to find it. "I'm glad you're helping out." Catherine
called after him. Heero watched the blonde as he
continued his quest. "That's Quatre Winner. He's a
friend of Trowa's. He and Chang Wufei are spending
the night tonight, so there will be five of us for
dinner. They're nice boys."
Heero nodded, but his stony expression didn't change.
Quatre returned vacuum cleaner in hand and attacked
the hardwood floor of the room. Trowa and Wufei got
out of his way, deciding to let the mad vacuumer do
his job. Once everything was clean, they began to lay
out the stuff from Quatre's duffel bag. Once that was
in order they were ready to begin.
"Trowa." Catherine's voice came from outside the
door.
"Hai."
"How far have you gotten in there?"
"We're nearly done. We're just taking a break."
"Oh, good. I need you to run down to the store and
pick up a few things. I need to finish some stuff
with Heero." Trowa answered that he would while the
other two groaned.
"I guess we'll have to do this after dinner." Wufei
said.

* * *

Sitting on the floor, legs crossed, hands folded in
front of them the boys stared at the ouija board.
Quatre repeated the instructions his sister had told
him that morning. Trowa's heart pounded, he wondered
if the ghost was strong enough for this. It didn't
even have enough energy to speak, let alone produce
any sort of visible form. The most Trowa had ever
seen of it was a glowing orb.
"Are we ready?" Quatre asked. Trowa and Wufei nodded
at the same time. "Okay," Quatre drew in a deep
breath. "Let's begin." Placing their hands on the
triangular black plastic planchette on the ouija
board, Quatre spoke. He summoned the ghost and asked
it to speak through the board to them.
"Do you think he's here?" Wufei whispered out of the
corner of his mouth to Trowa. He was about to answer
no, when the air temperature in the room plummeted.
Wufei visibly shivered and goose bumps appeared on
Quatre's bare arms. He probably shouldn't have worn
the short sleeved shirt, Trowa thought.
"Oh ghost who dwells here, tell us your name." Quatre
said in a priestly tone.
"Why are we asking it? Don't we already know it?"
Wufei hissed.
"Shh! It's for confirmation that we have the right
spirit." Quatre growled. Trowa shook his head, this
wasn't going very well at all.
Suddenly the tiny hairs on the back of Trowa's hand
began to tingle. Beneath the three pairs of hands,
the planchette moved along the alphabet. It glided to
the D, then the O and finally the U. Then is paused.
"Duo." Quatre said aloud. The planchette began
moving again, this time spelling out the last name.
"Maxwell." Trowa whispered. The three boys stared at
one another. It was the right ghost.
"Can we ask it questions now?" inquired Wufei.
Quatre nodded. Acting as the medium, he asked Duo how
long he'd been dead. The planchette moved to 5 and 0.
"It'll be fifty years this Halloween." Trowa said
softly.
"How depressing. To die when you were only sixteen."
Wufei muttered. "We need to ask him how he died."
"Yes," Trowa said slowly. "We do. Quatre?" Quatre
nodded. Once more the planchette moved across the
alphabet, this time spelling out C-H-O-K-D.
"Chokd? What is chokd?" Wufei demanded.
"I think he means choked." Trowa said softly. "It's
spelled phonetically."
"But the paper said it was a suicide, not a murder."
Wufei stated. He turned to Quatre. "Ask him if he
was murdered."
"Duo, were you murdered?" Instantly the planchette
flew to NO. "Was it an accident?" This time it moved
to YES. "What did you choke on?" It took nearly a
full two minutes before the Trowa and the others felt
any sort of movement from the planchette. Duo's
spelling was getting worse. He spelled out
M-B-E-A-R-A-S-N-G. Everyone was confused. It took
several minutes of sounding the letters out to
determine that Duo had meant "embarrassing". Meaning
that whatever he had choked on was too embarrassing to
reveal. They decided to change the subject. They
asked if he got along with his parents, he'd spelled
out S-U-M-T-I-M-Z. When they inquired about if he'd
been a good student, it had taken two and a half
minutes for him to reply.
"I think he's getting tired." Trowa pointed out.
"You're probably right." Quatre replied. He forcibly
moved the planchette to GOODBYE and signed off.
Afterwards the three boys sat on the floor just
staring at the board.
"That was interesting. I wonder what he choked on."
Wufei muttered.
"And why did the police and his parents think it was
a suicide?" Quatre remarked running his hands through
his blond hair. "Gr. This is aggravating. I mean
it's great that we made contact, but we have more
questions than we started out with."
"He's not very strong." Trowa commented. "He has
never shown his human form to me, just a glowing orb
and that only happened once."
"Probably." Quatre muttered. It would have been cool
if he'd appeared though. Kari would have loved a
picture."
"Your sister is weird." Wufei said.
"Look who's talking. You agreed to the séance."
Quatre reminded. Wufei grinned.
"I like weird things too." Quatre rolled his eyes as
Wufei laughed. Neither of them appeared to notice
that the temperature in the room had risen back to
normal. Duo's spirit had moved on to other parts of
the house or had simply gone back to where it came
from. Trowa hoped it was all right.

On to Part 4

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